Author: Matthew Smith

British Muslims, alienation and terrorism

The Guardian recently carried two related depressing stories about the Muslim community here and terrorism. The first was that, according to some survey carried out by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, British Muslims had more negative views about their non-Muslim fellow citizens than do Muslims in Europe and more likely to believe conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks

Zia Sardar on intelligence

Zia Sardar in the current edition of the New Statesman on the folly of “intelligence-led” police operations:
Don’t be fooled by the mantra that intelligence is an extremely difficult business, prone to absurdly wide margins of error. If that were so, Britain would have lost the Second World War. The remarkable success of British intelligence, including counter-intelligence, during that war proves that we can produce reasonable – say, 25 or even 50 per cent – rates of success.

Spencer, the NDU scholars, the securocrat and his books

Robert Spencer today posted to his blog *Jihad Watch* [a memo](http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/011960.php) by one LTC Joseph C. Myers, Senior Army Advisor at Air Command and Staff College, Maxwell AFB, in reply to [an article](http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jun2006/20060622_5489.html) on...

My Mac and Ubuntu

On Sunday evening I finally got round to ordering the new hard drive for my Mac (a 120Gb Seagate). It arrived on Tuesday morning by standard first-class post, which was unexpectedly early, though they...

The perils of off-the-peg American policy

Two interesting articles regarding the British government's enthusiasm for adopting US policies into British criminal law: First, from this week's New Statesman: Martin Bright explains why our ministers seem always to look to the...

Some good news from Somalia

Richard Dowden (of the Royal African Society) in today's Independent argues that the Islamic Courts militia which recently seized power in Mogadishu (and may take control of other areas) is not a new Taliban,...

Talking of service …

Saracen just made the point (entry below) about how on the High Street, "stock, price and service sometimes leave a lot to be desired", which is why he buys much of what he buys...

Buying computer gear

Earlier this evening I ordered a new hard drive for my Mac, one which has approximately triple the storage space of the one in there at the moment (120 gigabytes instead of 40). The...

Nick Cohen on last Sunday’s demo

Here is what Nick Cohen has to say about a demonstration I attended outside Scotland Yard (London police HQ) last Sunday in response to the bungled Forest Gate raid. He is suggesting that everyone...

Mad Mel in the Guardian

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Jackie Ashley meets Melanie Phillips I'm sure some of you are getting sick to death with this and wondering if I have an infatuation with Melanie Phillips, but...

Most Turks oppose hijab ban

IslamOnline reports that a recent poll in Turkey reveals that most people oppose the country's ban on hijab in the civil service and universities (see also this report from the Washington Post, thanks UZ)....

Ahmedinejad misquoted

Comment is free: Lost in translation Jonathan Steele on how the president of Iran's notorious "wipe off the map" speech did not in fact contain the offending words at all: The New York Times's...

Mad Mel’s audience

Just checking for reviews of Melanie Phillips' new book, and came across this, on Amazon … the details of what people who bought Londonistan also bought. Bawer, Fallaci, Robert Spencer, Andrew Bostom, Bat Eeyore...